NEWSLETTER
But I've never added a friend on TikTok, sent a direct message, or considered myself a “TikToker.” And I don't think I'm alone. For most people I know, TikTok is not a place to connect with other people. It is a place to waste time, to fall asleep, to disconnect from reality and float in the feed. That passive, dissociative quality, while great for engagement, has also made TikTok feel more replaceable than other, more social networks. If it goes away, we'll fix it somewhere else.
I am also convinced by the explanation given in The Atlantic by Hana Kiros, who <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/01/tiktok-already-won/681343/” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>says tiktok He is a victim of his own success. The popularity of TikTok, he maintains, has led many other social networks to copy its functions. Now, users who want to dive into an endless hole of short, entertaining vertical videos can go to instagram, YouTube, Snapchat or x, all of which have introduced TikTok-style feeds in recent years. And in a world where every app works like TikTok, perhaps TikTok itself feels less necessary.
I'll add a more optimistic possibility: Maybe we're ready for a change.
What spending time on TikTok represents, at least for me, is a kind of cognitive surrender, a willingness to stop actively directing my thoughts and feelings and let ByteDance's algorithm entertain me for a while. It can be a pleasurable and sometimes euphoric experience. (Every few days, my wife catches me laughing at my phone and asks, “What's so funny?” The answer, always, is TikTok.)
But over the years, as I've spent more time on TikTok, I've also noticed how it's starting to rewire my brain: blurring my focus, shortening my attention span, making me less interested in media that isn't laser-targeted. to my precise set of dopamine receptors. Others have reported that TikTok has become a harmful addiction for them, an app they desperately want the government to ban because they can't quit on their own.
It is probably wishful thinking to believe that if the ban goes into effect, millions of screen-addicted TikTok users will start reading “Ulysses” and taking long walks in their free time. But perhaps it's reasonable to look at the shrug around TikTok's demise and wonder if, after years of paying attention to that app, we're ready to invest it elsewhere.
